Viaplay undertakes a major modernization of its studios and relies on Lawo for the AoIP part

Viaplay has recently completed a major renovation of its studios in Warsaw (Poland). In its modernization project they have included Lawo mc²36 and diamond mixing consoles, and RAVENNA / AES67-native IP infrastructure products.

LP Systems, Lawo’s partner in Poland, were appointed to implement the audio portion of Viaplay’s studio update. “The project is designed as a fully IP-based infrastructure”, says Artur Jóźwik, Sales and Support Engineer. The massive technical upgrade was performed during June and July 2022.

The renovation included two new studios with separate control rooms for audio and video, as well as twelve sports commentator booths with six separate small audio control rooms. For the main audio control rooms, two Lawo mc²36 consoles where chosen. They can be sized from 16 to 48 faders, the A__UHD cores provide 256 DSP channels (each), 48kHz and 96kHz operation, and 864 channels of I/O capacity. They also feature redundant power supplies and ST2022-7 network link redundancy demanded by live broadcast operations.

diamond broadcast desks were installed in each of the six audio control rooms. It scales from 2 to 60 physical faders and features an innovative Virtual Extension touchscreen control and information option. The diamonds are powered by three Power Core engines equipped with MAX licenses; these IP-native devices featured built-in RAVENNA and MADI interfaces plus expansion slots for analog, digital and DANTE interface cards, plus 96 DSP channels and 80 summing busses.

“All microphone inputs, sums, AUX lines and other signals are transmitted as RAVENNA / AES67 streams; only the speaker connections remained analogue,” says LP Systems’ Jóźwik. “It’s a very flexible solution that enables Viaplay to combine any studio with any control room at any time. Everything works together seamlessly, without any additional routing needed.”

All IP-native Lawo devices are connected and managed within the network by the HOME management platform for IP-based media infrastructures, using web interfaces with standard browsers. The RAVENNA / AES67 audio network is underpinned by Artel Quarra switches. Integration with video systems is done using DirectOut Prodigy.MP processors in mirror mode for full system redundancy. These devices convert RAVENNA signals to MADI and vice versa, and help facilitate final DSP processing.